The Committee of Ministers is monitoring the state of implementation of the accession and other specific commitments by various member states of the Council of Europe. These regular “monitoring” reports (with different titles – monitoring, fact-finding, stock-taking or information/assistance) are prepared by the Secretariat or Committee’s Groups with different time-intervals pursuant to the decisions of the Committee of Ministers adopted under the so called 94 Declaration or on the basis of other respective decisions of the Committee.
During the last 5 years these reports have been prepared on a regular basis in relation to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia. I have also consulted three reports prepared in 2009 by the Secretary General on “The Council of Europe and the conflict in Georgia - Activities for the promotion of Council of Europe values and standards” (SG/Inf(2009)5; SG/Inf(2009)5add and SG/Inf(2009)5 add2), which include the charts presenting the state of implementation of accession commitments by Georgia and the Russian Federation.
After thorough examination of the information provided in all the above-mentioned “monitoring” reports, it becomes clear that the situation with the implementation of commitments differs, in quality and quantity from state to state. However, I was struck by the fact that during the last 5 years there was not a single report about the state of implementation of commitments by the Russian Federation. Although, the abovementioned SG/Inf(2009)5 report and addendums provide with the charts, they first of all do not sufficiently present the state of commitment realisation and secondly, where more detailed information is available, it more or less covers the state of implementation of those commitments that are linked with the political conflicts in the territory of former USSR.
Keeping in mind the internationally available reports on the state of democracy, rule of law and Human Rights in the Russian Federation, I would like to ask the Committee of Ministers the following questions: